


Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

by somnolentblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnolentblue/pseuds/somnolentblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after death, Mary has work to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EllieMurasaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).



> Written for [elliemurasaki](http://elliemurasaki.dreamwidth.org) at [fandom_stocking](http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_stocking). She asked for "Mary &/ Ellen vs Crowley."

**Mary, Mary Quite Contrary**

Mary had known, when she dealt with Azazel for John's soul, that she was condemning herself to hell.

When Azazel came, she clung to her home, her tiny and erratic power telling her that she would be needed there. So she dwelt for years, inhabiting the walls and mourning the life that her husband had lost and her sons would never know. Eventually, they came, and she saw them – dark, protective Dean and tall, shining Sam, her boys who would, she knew, challenge demons and angels. She saved them, and her work on the mortal plane was done.

She went to hell, and there she found what she had expected. She climbed off the rack quickly – what use was misery and suffering? it aided no one – and explored. Sometimes she hid in the cracks of reality, and other times she fought and made others bleed as she herself bled. She didn't waste energy wondering about the metaphysics of it all.

She saw her father gleefully wielding knives and words with exquisite skill, and she departed, lest she be sick.

She shielded her John from the worst deprecations, although he knew it not. She was gentle with him, sparing him the blades of others, and he didn't break because she never applied pressure to the flaws she saw running through him.

She couldn't spare her son in a similar manner.

John had left and angels had fetched her boy and she was all alone once again. She avoided the Campbell family dominion – how long had they been making deals, she wondered, to have carved out a bit of hell in such a fashion – and when the foundations shook she hoped for the future.

And then her son, the last Winchester standing, came tumbling down.

She fought her way to his cage, but she could only press her nose up against the bars, watching and waiting for her chance. Crowley came, and he summoned forth her boy's body without opening the bars, denying her the opportunity to save him or keep him company in his punishment.

(The other one was too untempered to last a night, much less the eons they found themselves enduring. Besides, Michael _owed her_ , as did Lucifer, for was she not their mother, as much as the arrogant bastards would deny it?)

She could not help her son, but she could foil the plans of the one who had denied her the opportunity. Rumors carried swiftly in the underworld, status and opportunity depending on the rhythms and whims of those more powerful. Crowley wanted Purgatory.

Mary knew where Purgatory touched Hell, how to bend herself around and through the edges to slip the border.

Purgatory would not be easy for Crowley to take.

 **How Does Your Garden Grow**

Ellen had known, when the hellhounds came, that she was condemning herself to hell.

Jo's soul had, mercifully, shuffled off the mortal coil before the hellhounds could get their greedy teeth into it, but Ellen had died with them right beside her, teeth and jaws ready to grab and rend and drag.

That they had all ended up in Purgatory together never ceased to make her laugh. At first, the laughter had been hysterical in nature, but she adjusted. Her life had been a long succession of adjustments, one right after the other, and her death was fated for more of the same. Now they paced beside her, faithful and dangerous.

It was awkward, the first time she encountered the spirit of something sentient that she had killed; she got over it – the dead, at least these dead, don't hold grudges.

She wandered the borders of Purgatory, and it took months for her reflexive reach for knife and salt to cease, for her to pass the spirits of vampires and werewolves, striga and faeries without restraining curses and holy words. However, she learned the lay of the land, and she found a comfortable corner to exist in.

There were a few other humans with her, people who had been caught up in freak accidents and weird coincidences at the time of their death and had slipped the reapers' grasp. Apparently, being dead took care of questions of translation, but most people found pockets of spirits from their own place (broadly defined) and their own time (more or less) and didn't venture very far.

She thanked God, just in case God still listened, that she never found Jo (who couldn't be in Hell, which meant that she was in Heaven or otherwise treading her path).

Things changed after the firmament trembled.

People tumbled into Purgatory faster and faster, entire families, increasingly powerful ones, wiped out _en masse_. They brought tales of hunters working for demons, and Ellen listened to the rumors and the whispers and recognized Winchesters and Campbells enmeshed in the stories.

Debates about arcane points of philosophy broke out. Could a demon actually slip the borders or had its damnation warped it too much? Purgatory was infinite, so did it matter if Crowley had fantasies of dominion? If they tore down the borders themselves, would it allow them to slip the boundaries and venture elsewhere as human souls did?

They watched the borders and waited.

Then Scylla, Charybdis, and Cerebus brought her a soul, and, when it recovered from their attentions, she recognized Mary Campbell.

 **With Silver Bells and Cockle Shells**

When she recovered her senses, Mary ached. A puff of air blew across her bare foot, and she fought not to twitch. She didn't know what was watching her, but, in the realm of the monstrous, it could be nothing good. She tried to discern everything she could about her environment and dredge up long-forgotten facts about Purgatory while feigning unconsciousness.

"So, Mary Winchester, how do you find yourself in this little corner of the afterlife? Last I heard, you were human."

Recognizing the voice – and how had Ellen fucking Harvelle ended up here? she was out, last Mary had known – Mary decided that the odds favored opening her eyes.

"Last I heard, Ellen Harvelle, so were you. What changed?"

She sat up, and then had to close her eyes a minute as the world swam. Whatever had happened to her, it was nothing like her previous, admittedly brief, jaunt across the border.

"Still am," Ellen said. "Had a bit of bad luck. You?"

Mary shrugged and cracked her neck. "The same."

"Mmmm. Has to hurt, though, being out of Hell and all."

Surprised, Mary looked at Ellen. "How'd you figure that?"

"Not hard. You reek of hellfire, and the pups kept trying to cuddle up to you. Surprised you got across, actually, although it'll be of interest to some around these parts that a demon could."

"I'm not a demon," Mary said.

Ellen raised an eyebrow. "Not human, either, not smelling like that and sitting here."

"Didn't say I was human, just that I wasn't a demon." Mary shrugged. "I don't know what I am, not any more, but that's not the point. I have a job to do, and I'm going to do it."

Ellen didn't answer, just picked up the whetstone and knife that had been sitting on the the table beside her and started sharpening it. Mary took the opportunity to look around the room. It was more comfortable than anything she'd seen in Hell, and she didn't know if that was a function of the location or the inhabitant. Things shifted and were malleable in ways that it wasn't worth trying to understand, just work with. Here, three of walls had neatly racked weapons and windows, which let in a diffuse grey light. The fourth wall was solid bookshelves, light wood, and filled with texts and hunter paraphernalia.

And three hellhounds were looking at her from the end of the purple velvet couch she was sitting on.

"Ellen," Mary said, voice tight, hands clenching at the long-ago memory of fighting teeth and fetid breath, "why are there hellhounds?"

"Because they brought me here and haven't wandered off ever since," Ellen said. "Part of that bad luck I mentioned. We've come to a truce about it all."

There wasn't anything to say to Ellen's stark statement, so she decided to get to the point of her trip.

"Crowley's coming," she said. "He wants to annex Purgatory."

"We know. Hard to keep that a secret when every other new arrival is here because of Crowley's torture and persistent questions about alphas and purgatory. Not every person here plans beyond 'rock smash fire burn,' but enough of us do that we can figure out obvious patterns. We're working on the situation. It's why I've acquired the arsenal; humans are about the only inhabitants who can handle everything we conjure up without some sort of wretched side effects. Ever seen a werewolf who's already dead with silver poisoning? It's not pretty, and it seems to be permanent.

"Why are you here, Mary? Are you his herald or his spy? Do you want first claims at the new land?"

Mary bared her teeth. "I'll damn myself to the void before Crowley gains anything from my efforts unless its vexation, frustration, or annihilation."

Mary took a deep breath to calm down, lest she morph her shape, and then realized what, exactly, Ellen had said.

"Who is 'we,' and why is there a werewolf involved?"

Ellen waited a few minutes, knife going snick snick snick, before answering. "Purgatory holds everyone. Werewolves, vampires, djinn, striga, others you likely haven't seen in your hunts or your hiding in Kansas. Humans, we have options, paths that we tread or places we go; monsters, they seem to end up here. I suspect there are other places and other paths for them, but every creature I've ever killed or heard of killing comes here in the end."

Well, fuck. She hadn't reckoned on non-humans being the inhabitants of Purgatory; she'd planned on how to defend and work with people, not monsters.

"You could help, you know," Ellen offered. "They all mostly kept to themselves on Earth, so there's more direct demonic experience in this room than in any twenty other people combined, if you discount being tortured to death. And we can always use another armsmaster. You could provide some valuable intelligence, even if we already knew about Crowley."

Mary contemplated her options. She wouldn't go back to Hell, not with Crowley in charge. However, she wasn't certain about staying here alongside the monsters she had spent the first years of her life hunting and killing; it was unnatural, and Ellen's easy acceptance of the situation, the way she doled out easy pats when the hellhounds wandered near, turned her stomach.

But.

Crowley had kept her from her son.

She had work to do.

 **And Pretty Maids All In A Row**

Crowley never came.

The influx of new inhabitants stopped, and rumors began to circulate that Crowley was dead, sent to oblivion by holy warriors (some said angels). Soon, the loose coalition that had formed in the face of Crowley's threat dissolved into its component parts, everyone wandering back to their own preferred corners and playtimes. Those who like philosophizing still did so, fascinated by the information Mary provided, but everyone else stopped paying attention to their esoteric debates and conclusions.

The firmament shook once, twice, thrice more as the wars within Heaven and Hell raged.

Mary and Ellen stood vigilant, ready to defend their home. When the armies of Hell brushed the borders, they killed them; when the armies of Heaven brushed the borders, they banished them.

A reaper came and told them stories about sons and daughters and souls and death.

They never asked if she spoke truths or lies; in the absence of knowledge that contradicted the tale she told, they chose to believe it.


End file.
